Not sure why you're downvoted. The general public (including OP) still believes that Yelp manages reviews differently for businesses that purchase advertising.
There is zero physical evidence that Yelp does or ever did this. The only thing that Yelp ever did was move one positive review to the top of the page for advertisers, and I'm pretty sure they abandoned that practice a long time ago.
It's pretty obvious to me that unsophisticated business owners are simply drawing false inferences when they receive a sales call and then receive a negative review. Confirmation bias at work.
There is zero physical evidence that Yelp does or ever did this. The only thing that Yelp ever did was move one positive review to the top of the page for advertisers, and I'm pretty sure they abandoned that practice a long time ago.
It's pretty obvious to me that unsophisticated business owners are simply drawing false inferences when they receive a sales call and then receive a negative review. Confirmation bias at work.
Here's an old Hacker News comment that seems to me to probably be close to reality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149078